King's Carolina Rangers

In June 1779, Thomas Brown's East Florida Rangers were converted into a regiment of infantry.  Brown remained Lieutenant-Colonel.  The regiment consisted of nine companies, one of which became a troop of dragoons in 1782.  It saw action in the defence of Savannah in September and then in June 1780 took part in the recapture of Augusta.  After that the regiment seems to have been involved in patrolling and raiding around South Carolina and Georgia and it was invovled in the Battle of Hanging Rock on 6 August 1780.  Augusta fell to the Americans in October 1781 and most of the regiment were captured.  Voluteers helped reform the unit and at the end of the war the regiment found itself in St Augustine in East Florida, where it was disbanded.  Several thousand loyalist refugees had collected in St Augustine, which was thought to be safe British territory.  To their dismay, East Florida was ceded to Spain by the Treaty of Paris of 1783 and so they had to leave.  The loyalists, including the men of the King's Carolina Rangers, who presumably saw no point in returning "home", were settled in various other British territories.  Thomas Brown went first to Abaco Island in the Bahamas and then in 1799 to St Vincent's Island.  He remained there, working his plantation until his death in 1825. 

There is a good re-enactors site here, from which I took much of the historical material above.

This regiment appears only once in the published "British Grenadier!" scenarios - an 8-figure unit for Savannah.  These are mainly Perry plastic Continental infantry with slouch hats from the plastic British infantry set.  The drummer is from one of the Perry metal British.  As is common with many AWI gamers, I imagine, I have lots of spare drummer and ensign figures from both sides, so it's always handy to use them up.  The drummer has lace and a plume, which none of the other figures have, but who cares, frankly - I thought it would be nice to give the unit a bit of colour, and I do like the dark green/red uniform combination.   I painted a standard flowery "GR" cypher on the drum, but you can't see it in any of the pics.  I like the pose of the officer, with his left arm calmly held behind his back.  The shoulderbelts are black to carry over the cavalry uniform - I suppose they should probably be white.  I made up the NCO without really thinking about it - he is very much an "American" NCO, with an epaulette on the right shoulder and no sash.  I was going to use this figure for something else but then decided I couldn't be bothered.  Maybe it's a temporary uniform or he lost his sash.  For a small, esoteric unit like this, life's too short to worry about details like that, in my view.   

8 figures.  Painted November 2015.